Religion on TV News:

Executive Summary

After all the dramatic events of last year’s religion news, from
the installation of an openly gay bishop and the 25th anniversary of
Pope John Paul II’s historic pontificate to Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ,
religion coverage on the broadcast TV networks could be expected to
decline. To measure the trends in religion coverage in 2004 and the
beginning of 2005, Media Research Center analysts surveyed every
religion news story on ABC, CBS, and NBC news programs in the 12 months
from March 1, 2003 through February 29, 2004. Major findings include:

The trend of religion coverage declined measurably — until the Pope’s health scares in February.
Religion coverage is down, but not as much as might have been expected.
Overall, there were 648 total religion news stories in the 2004-05
study period, down from 705 religion news stories on the Big Three last
year. The slippage came in evening news coverage, which fell from 292 a
year ago to 228 this year. By contrast, the number of morning-show
segments was nearly the same (331 in 2003-04, down to 320 in 2004-05)
and the number of magazine and interview-show segments went up slightly
(from 82 to 89). Without all the stories in February, the number of
evening news stories would have been close to half of last year’s total.

The Catholic Church received the most
coverage among faiths, but the percentage of Catholic coverage devoted
to the aftermath of sex-abuse scandals has dropped. The health
scares surrounding the Pope exaggerated the usual broadcast network
tendency to focus on the nation’s largest religious affiliation. The
church’s sex-abuse scandals headed toward the margins of coverage, with
only 10 reporter-based stories on the evening news, or one-sixth of the
stories on the Catholic Church. Last year, almost half of the
reporter-based stories on the Catholic church – 35 out of 75 – focused
on clergy abuse scandal news. The percentage of morning show segments
was also one-sixth of the Catholic coverage, about the same level in
the morning as last year.

Reporters approached religious issues
from a very secular and political perspective, especially in stories on
the presidential campaign. When some Roman Catholic bishops
announced that they would deny Democratic candidate John Kerry the
sacrament of the Eucharist over his decades of pro-abortion voting and
advocacy, network reporters placed all their scrutiny on the church
leaders, not on Kerry. Not only did they fail to explain the
Eucharistic rules of the Church, they misquoted bishops as claiming
Catholics shouldn’t “vote for sinners,” while they described Kerry as a
“devout,” “observant,” and “practicing Catholic” despite his
pro-abortion record. Kerry’s opponents were labeled “conservative,” but
Kerry and his supporters were never described as “liberal.”

TV news often ignored religion news that the Religion Newswriters Association found were the top stories of the year.
Surprisingly, after all of last year’s supportive coverage of gay
Episcopalian bishop Gene Robinson, the networks barely touched the
church trials of two lesbian Methodist ministers. During the study
period, only NBC noticed the Christian ministers that have topped the
list of best-selling books, especially Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, which recently entered the media spotlight after the Atlanta courthouse killings.

The MRC Special Report concludes with four ways
the networks could improve their coverage of religion in the future:
hire a full-time religion correspondent; hire reporters who are
themselves religious; present the religious and theological dimensions
of social issues instead of focusing solely on political elements; and
present viewers with a balance of religious experts, not just a few
favored (generally liberal) theologians.

Introduction

As America approached Easter last year, it seemed the 25th
anniversary of John Paul II’s pontificate and the religious and
commercial phenomenon surrounding the movie The Passion of the Christ
had ushered in a new height for religious discussion in the news media,
but it would have been easy to predict that this focus would not last.
The Pope’s failing health means less headline-grabbing action, less
globe-trotting evangelism, and more symbolic suffering with the burdens
of age and the ravages of disease. Pre-release publicity about The Passion’s
potential effect for violence and hatred was hotter and heavier than
post-release coverage of the movie’s peaceful and profitable reception.

Did the network news divisions predictably lose
their interest in religious news topics? To measure the trend, MRC
analysts surveyed every religion news story on ABC, CBS, and NBC news
programs in the 12 months from March 1, 2004 through February 28, 2005.
We then compared those numbers to the numerical highs of last year’s
study of the matching months.

Religion coverage is down, but not as much as
might have been expected. Overall, there were 648 total religion news
stories in the 2004-05 study period, down from 705 religion news
stories on the Big Three last year. The real slippage came in evening
news coverage, which fell from 292 a year ago to 239 this year. By
contrast, the number of morning show segments was nearly the same (331
in 2003-04, down to 320 in 2004-05) and the number of magazine and
interview show segments went up slightly (from 82 to 89).

One major reason for the smaller-than-expected
decline was Pope John Paul’s two hospital trips in February. Without
the surge in Vatican stories in February, the previous 11 months
contained only 175 evening news stories, which would have been close to
only half of last year’s total. The morning show total would have
declined by 63 stories to 257. The magazine and interview shows were
almost unaffected.

The other finding of last year remains: Network
coverage continues to explore religious issues through secular and
political lenses, skeptical of religion’s claims on the American
imagination. Journalists were taken aback after the 2004 elections at
what pollsters discovered about the electorate. Newsweek found 82
percent of Americans believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and
67 percent agreed that the Christmas story, “the Virgin birth, the
angelic proclamation to the shepherds, the Star of Bethlehem, and the
Wise Men from the East is historically accurate,” instead of “a
theological story written to affirm faith in Jesus Christ.” A Gallup
poll found that 82 percent of Americans believe the Bible is either the
literal Word of God, or the inspired Word of God, compared to just 15
percent who said the book was comprised of “fables.”

Depending on the poll, anywhere from 72 percent to
77 percent of Americans support posting the Ten Commandments on
government property, even if they’re more skeptical about politicians
taking too many cues from religious leaders, or having preachers
endorse candidates from the pulpit.

Journalists, by contrast, are historically a class
that has feared that religion is exclusionary, intolerant, and latently
theocratic. ABC morning host Diane Sawyer spoke for that viewpoint in
relaying the concerns of “Kerry voters” on November 4 to Bush adviser
Rev. Joe Watkins: “There’s a definite sense this morning on the part of
the Kerry voters that perhaps this is code, ‘moral values,’ is code for
something else. It’s code for taking a different position about gays in
America, an exclusionary position, a code about abortion, code about
imposing Christianity over other faiths.”

On the November 7 Meet the Press,
host Tim Russert announced: “One Democrat said to me, ‘Are we on the
verge of a theocracy, where if you don't agree with the president and
evangelical Christians on abortion or on gays, there really is no room
for you to practice what you believe in the United States?’”

What bill would be introduced in Congress to “impose” Christianity? What “theocracy” is emerging? They did not explain.

That disconnect on religious faith between the
media elite and the public comes through on network television, no
matter how routinely the religion stories are reported. Their coverage
suggests that religious Americans should meet the demands of a secular
orthodoxy, never daring to bring religious beliefs into the political
agenda or let religious ideas influence public opinion on social
issues. Even when the amount of religion news increases, the media’s
tone remains wary of ancient dogmas, preferring modernist
interpretations that require few changes in attitude and behavior that
would set a believer apart from the popular culture, or at odds with
the secular media worldview.

Evening News Programs

In the last study period, the number of evening news stories on ABC’s World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News, and the NBC Nightly News
rose to 292, up dramatically from the 121 news stories our first annual
survey found in 1993. In the 2004-05 study period, the number of
evening news stories declined to 239. Without February, it would have
been 175, less than 60 percent of the last study’s story total.

This total includes both the longer,
reporter-based story ranging from 90 seconds to a few minutes, as well
as a small number of anchor-read news bites, often about 30 seconds in
length. CBS had the most stories with 98, compared to 74 for ABC and 67
for NBC. (Last year, CBS also had the most stories with 103, compared
to 95 for NBC and 94 for ABC.) But in the study period, CBS also had a
much higher number of anchor-read stories with 32, while ABC aired 11
and NBC aired 17. So in reporter-based stories, CBS led slightly with
66 to ABC’s 63 and NBC’s 50. Of those 179 reporter-based stories, 45 of
them (or 27 percent) came in February. NBC in particular would have
plummeted to only half of the last study’s total without February (from
74 full stories and 21 briefs to just 36 and 15).

Part of that decline (without a comparative
decline in morning news stories or magazine stories) might be
attributed to the rise of campaign news in a presidential election
year. But as evening news story counter Andrew Tyndall has
demonstrated, the number of minutes devoted to electoral politics on
the evening news in 2004 was unquestionably light in many weeks. (For
example, Tyndall’s June total
of evening-news coverage from Monday to Friday was 46 minutes on the
three networks, little more than 15 minutes a month for each network.)
Not only did John Kerry’s campaign almost disappear from the national
scene in slow weeks, the networks in recent election cycles have not
shown much interest in other state and national campaigns, unless a
movie star is running.

The Faith Breakdown

True to the pattern of previous MRC religion news
studies, the Catholic Church received the most coverage among faiths.
The Catholic Church was the subject of 60 out of the 179 reporter-based
stories (35 percent), and 27 of the 60 anchor briefs (45 percent). Last
year, the Catholics drew 75 out of 208 reporter-based stories (36
percent), and 53 of the 84 anchor briefs (63 percent). The coverage of
the Pope’s health troubles (and perhaps the networks preparing to
scramble over who would get the best access to the next papal conclave)
drew a more positive tone and more church officials to the February
coverage.

In relation to past years, the number of stories
on clergy sexual abuse headed toward the margins of coverage, with only
ten full stories and 11 anchor briefs. (In the 2003-04 study, almost
half of the reporter-based stories on the Catholic Church – 35 out of
75 – focused on clergy abuse scandals.) The stories centered on the
conviction of Boston priest Paul Shanley, the controversy over the
Diocese of Boston closing more than 60 churches due to poor attendance
and financial decline spurred by the scandals, and abuse-related
bankruptcy declarations by dioceses in Portland, Spokane, and Tucson.

Islam came in second, with 23 reporter-based
stories and 11 anchor briefs, about half of the coverage it received in
our study last year (48 full stories and 14 briefs). It should be noted
that our study measures the number of TV news stories on the religion
of Islam, not the political entities of Islam. Daily news coverage of
Iraq during the study period often mentioned the prospects of civil war
between Shi’a and Sunni Muslims, or as the elections drew near,
explained their differing approaches on the road to democracy. (See
more on that later in the report.)

TV journalists continued to press American
officials about the way their actions are perceived in “Muslim nations”
or the “Muslim world,” even though the same reporters wouldn’t dream of
describing America as a “Christian nation” or as leader of the
“Christian world.” Muslims make up a little over two percent of the
American population, and Christians are about three percent of the
Iraqi population. Ironically, reporters are sensitive to these terms on
our home turf because of our tradition of religious liberty, but the
media do not seem to expect growing toleration of minority religions in
the “Muslim world.”

With election-year controversies over religion and
politics and Supreme Court cases like atheist Michael Newdow’s
complaint against a school district making his daughter utter the words
“under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, church-and-state issues came
in third with 40 full stories and seven anchor briefs.

Morning News Programs

For this study, the network morning shows are on a slightly uneven playing field. NBC’s Today
is the air-time champion, airing seven days a week, three hours on
weekdays, and generally two hours on Saturday and one hour on Sunday.
CBS airs The Early Show for two hours from Monday to Saturday, and also airs the 90-minute show Sunday Morning. ABC’s Good Morning America aired only from Monday to Friday in the study period, until they unveiled weekend editions on September 4.

The morning show total of 320 was divided into 216
reporter-based stories or interviews to 104 short anchor briefs.
Perhaps due to its time advantage, NBC led with 82 full stories and 38
briefs (120 in total), compared to CBS with 64 and 38 (102), and ABC in
third with 70 and 28 (98). NBC’s total was up from 2003-04, while CBS
and ABC both declined. In last year’s study, CBS was first with 118
reports (76 stories/interviews, 42 anchor briefs). ABC was strongest on
weekdays with 109 segments (76 and 33). Despite its extra air time, NBC
was third last year with 104 (62 and 42).

Without the numbers-boosting month of February,
all three networks would have been in a more noticeable decline, with
NBC posting 85 total stories, CBS with 84, and ABC with 80. As in the
case of the evening shows, the larger number should be put in context —
the networks are each still averaging little more than two morning
segments a week in seven days of programs.

The Catholic Church led the morning coverage with
122 stories (72 reporter-based stories/interviews and 50 anchor
briefs), down from last year’s total of 145 stories (78 reporter-based
stories or interview segments, and 67 anchor briefs). The Catholic
sexual abuse story drew almost the same amount of morning coverage in
last year’s study, with 14 out of 72 full stories, or a little more
than a sixth of the coverage. Abuse angles carried only 13 of the 78
morning show full reports on Catholics last year.

The second largest group of stories are those
dealing with generic Christianity, including controversies over a tacky
Nativity scene at Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in London, and new trends
like Nelson Publishing’s “Bible-zines” that present the Bible in
glossy, illustrated magazine packaging. Church-state questions,
including controversies over teaching “intelligent design” theories in
addition to evolution in schools, came in third with 19 full stories
and eight anchor briefs.

An Atheist Moment

Atheists were represented in an NBC interview with comedian George Carlin, who was promoting his book When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?
Lauer joked: “Let’s say right off the bat, anything offensive here is
not my idea, it’s all your idea, okay?” Carlin said of the title: “I
realized about a week later, and it might have been my brother who
pointed it out, that it offends all three major religions, plus the
vegetarians. So there’s a bonus in there.”

When Lauer said it was safe to say “you don’t hold
organized religion in the highest regard,” Carlin added, “No, I think
religion has been one of the biggest, unfortunate things done to
mankind in the history of this....It’s produced more death and wars
than any other political purpose, land grabbing or anything. It’s
always been about my God and your God and the fight of religion against
other religions, or religion against no religion. The thing I don’t
like about it in particular is it has given people largely a sense of
powerlessness, and guilt, and shame, and fear. These things are brought
about by religion.”

Magazine/Interview Programs

To round out this portrait of network news coverage of religion,
MRC analysts also reviewed prime-time magazine programs (ABC’s Primetime Live and 20/20, CBS’s 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Wednesday, and 48 Hours, and NBC’s Dateline), ABC’s Nightline in late night, and the Sunday interview shows (ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, CBS’s Face the Nation, and NBC’s Meet the Press).
Since the segments are much longer than the average evening news story
and there are almost no anchor briefs, the magazine shows offer the
most in-depth coverage of religion news and issues.

Nightline, Primetime, and Dateline
devoted entire programs to religious topics. In those cases, segments
were determined by commercial breaks. Hour-long shows counted as five
segments, half-hour Nightline programs as three segments. ABC
led with 57 segments, far ahead of NBC with 20, and CBS with 12. Last
year, ABC also led with 43 segments, compared to 31 for NBC and just
eight on CBS. Among individual programs, Nightline aired 24, Dateline had 19, and all by himself, Peter Jennings did 15 segments in his three-hour special Jesus and Paul: The Word and The Witness. Several of the segments in the count were repeats: thanks to a rebroadcast of 2003's DaVinci Code special, Primetime had 13 segments.

All three Sunday-morning shows aired religion segments in the study period, compared to only ABC last year. CBS’s Face the Nation
reported on the Pope and interviewed Zbigniew Brzezinski about his
personal meetings and conversations with the Pope on February 27. On
November 28, both ABC and NBC featured balanced panels of conservative
and liberal religious leaders to discuss the trends set in religion and
politics by the election returns.

While ABC had a balanced and sober panel —
evangelical Gary Bauer and Catholic George Weigel on the right, and
former Democratic congressman and minister Floyd Flake and Tony Campolo
on the left — NBC aimed more for fireworks by including controversial
figures and tested TV battlers Jerry Falwell and Al Sharpton (as well
as Richard Land on the right and Jim Wallis on the left).

Not only did NBC start with a Crossfire-style
formula, but Russert threw his typically tough paragraph-length chunks
of quotations at Falwell and Land, using dated comments that were
widely attacked, such as Falwell’s declaration two days after 9/11 that
gays and lesbians and feminists brought an attack from the Almighty.
But Russert asked about nothing controversial from his liberal guests.
He quoted Wallis’s newspaper ads back to him. He replayed no
controversial quotes from the Sharpton playbook, not even his remarks
at the 2003 NARAL dinner, proclaiming that the “Christian Right” ought
to meet the “right Christians” who favor abortion.

In past MRC studies, magazine and interview
programs had the most variation in their focus on denominations. For
example, while the top three topics in last year’s study were 16
segments on the Catholic church, 15 on The Passion of the Christ,
and 14 on evangelical or Protestant churches, this year, only five
magazine or interview segments focused on Catholics. The largest
category was generic Christianity with a total of 36 segments,
beginning with the 15 parts in ABC’s three-hour special on the apostle
Paul.

Magazine shows did focus on sexual abuse in faiths other than Catholicism during the study period. ABC’s PrimeTime and Dateline NBC each focused on sexual abuse in Amish communities. On CBS’s 60 Minutes,
Christiane Amanpour reported on sexual abuse in a Muslim community on
the outskirts of Paris. In all these cases, reporters highlighted how
young women could be raped, even by family members, and then be shunned
if they tried to hold anyone accountable for it.

Church and State

Kerry’s Catholic Communion Battle

As in last year’s spate of stories on gay
Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson, the network reporters covering the
year’s major religion controversies treated these issues as primarily
political and secular. Take the controversy over some Catholic bishops
publicly declaring Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s
record of pro-abortion voting and advocacy made him unqualified to
receive the sacrament of the Eucharist. Senator Kerry replied that his
public life was entirely separate from his private life. In their set
of stories (comprising eight evening news stories and two anchor
briefs, as well as four morning segments) traditional church teachings
were portrayed as a “conservative” violation of church-state separation
and an unnecessary obstacle for “observant Catholic” Kerry. Networks
preferred the Kerry Catholic Church to the Roman Catholic Church.

TV reporters did not explain official Catholic
teaching on reception of the Eucharist. They also did not explain that
priests should not give communion to someone who is in a state of
“objectively” grave sin, i.e., a clear rejection of basic Church
teaching. For example, the gay protesters of the Rainbow Sash movement
wear sashes to Communion to suggest that by granting them the
sacrament, the priest endorses their lifestyle as acceptable to the
Church. They are regularly refused.

On Good Morning America April 9, ABC’s
Diane Sawyer began the first network morning story by reporting, “There
are some in the church, apparently, who believe that Kerry, although he
is an observant Catholic, should not be allowed to take communion.”
Reporter Dan Harris said the Kerry campaign was not worried about “an
implied threat from the city’s top church official” that Kerry might be
denied communion. Harris highlighted that Kerry “is a former altar boy
who says he once considered becoming a priest. But his support of
abortion rights has Vatican officials, U.S. bishops, and conservative
Catholics concerned.” While they would identify’s Kerry’s critics as
“conservative,” none of the network stories on this controversy used
the label “liberal” for Kerry or his supporters.

Harris quoted Kerry stressing his own secular
media-pleasing principle to never bring his religious beliefs to work:
“I fully intend to practice my religion as separately from what I do
with respect to my public life. And that’s the way it ought to be in
America.” The ABC reporter then shifted the “implied threat” from Kerry
back on to church officials: “Even as the Boston archdiocese is still
reeling from the priest sex scandals, the archbishop might not want to
invite any more controversy.”

On CBS, reporter Jim Axelrod ended his April 9 Evening News
story with what could have been labeled commentary: “Clearly, a
quarter-century of conservative appointments by Pope John Paul II is
having its effect on American politics. But church leaders need to be
careful, and not just to avoid a backlash by those who think Kerry is
being bullied. There’s a much bigger risk than that.” Then Joe
Feuerherd of the liberal National Catholic Reporter newspaper
suggested the Church ought to take dictation from the state: “After
all, Senator Kerry might one day be President Kerry, and it’s a
difficult circumstance to have distanced yourself from the head of a
major superpower when you have world interests like the Catholic Church
does.”

On April 12, the morning after Easter, NBC
reporter Carl Quintanilla reported the church “targets” politicians who
“according to priests” don’t vote their way. Kerry “defended his
faith....dismissing some conservative Catholic bishops.” Quintanilla
concluded that “polls show Catholics don’t believe the church should
tell them or politicians how to vote, one reason Kerry believes he can
ignore the protests without losing the voters.”

Today continued the discussion by
interviewing not a church official or religious scholar, but liberal
historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who dismissed the controversy: “It
seems like it’s still a small group of conservative Catholics who are
claiming...he’s not able to take communion. It’s not really what the
general feeling of the Church is, as I understand it.” But the networks
often confused the “general feeling” of Catholics, churchgoing and
non-churchgoing, with official teachings. That night, NBC reporter
Kelly O’Donnell summarized it right: “Kerry is Roman Catholic, but some
of his positions are not.”

On the April 23 CBS Evening News,
Bill Plante described Kerry as a “practicing Roman Catholic,” and
quoted Deal Hudson for rebuttal, labeled as a spokesman for
“conservative Catholics.” The networks often underlined their religious
illiteracy or willingness to accept Democratic spin when they called
Kerry an “observant Catholic,” a “practicing Catholic,” and even a
“devout Catholic.”

The definition of “practicing” begins with the
duty of Catholics to attend Mass on all Sundays and holy days of
obligation. Is that what Bill Plante meant in his report? More
importantly, it should seem obvious that John Kerry cannot be both in
very public disagreement with church teachings on a core issue like
legalized abortion and yet be presented with adjectives like
“observant” or “devout.” You could argue that in his campaign speech to
NARAL Pro-Choice America in January 2003, Kerry was condemning the
Catholic Church when he proclaimed, “We need to take on this President
and the forces of intolerance on the other side.”

Clamoring Against Colorado

The networks upped the ante on Catholic officials when The Denver Post reported that Michael Sheridan, the Bishop of Colorado Springs, wrote a pastoral letter
that stated that not merely pro-abortion Catholic politicians, but
Catholics who vote for them, are outside of full communion with church
teaching and should not receive communion.

Here’s the essential paragraph: “Any Catholic
politicians who advocate for abortion, for illicit stem cell research
or for any form of euthanasia ipso facto place themselves
outside full communion with the Church and so jeopardize their
salvation. Any Catholics who vote for candidates who stand for
abortion, illicit stem cell research or euthanasia suffer the same
fateful consequences. It is for this reason that these Catholics,
whether candidates for office or those who would vote for them, may not
receive Holy Communion until they have recanted their positions and
been reconciled with God and the Church in the Sacrament of Penance.”
That is the teaching of the Catholic Church — not the “conservatives”
or the “liberals” in the Church, but the Church.

In a June 2 newspaper column, Bishop Sheridan
protested the media treatment: “The most serious misrepresentation of
my letter was the conclusion drawn by many that I or other ministers of
Holy Communion would refuse the sacrament to people who voted in a
particular way. Nowhere in the letter do I say this or even suggest
it....How, in fact, could I deny anyone Holy Communion since I would
not know the condition of the communicant’s soul?” If the bishop had
written abortion advocates “should not” receive communion instead of
“may not,” it may have been seen as less of a command. But the networks
were in a fighting mood.

On ABC’s World News Tonight on May 16,
reporter Brian Rooney put all the pressure on the Church, not Kerry.
Typically, Rooney began with the liberal assumption: “The bishop says
he’s not violating the separation of church and state, merely
instructing Catholic parishioners that when they vote, they should vote
according to Catholic teachings.” Rooney then used liberal Georgetown
theologian Chester Gillis to claim President Bush was also an
unsuitable voting choice for Catholics, who would have to vote for
someone closer to perfection, like Mother Teresa. Rooney ended by
pressing Bishop Sheridan on who he was going to vote for, as if it was
improper for him to have a public opinion. (The bishop declined to
endorse Bush.)

CBS liked the angle of church “punishment.” On the May 14 CBS Evening News,
Dan Rather said “some Roman Catholic voters may soon face a hard choice
between a matter of faith and the orders of their church superiors and
casting a ballot in line with their own political beliefs. CBS News
correspondent Jim Axelrod reports on the politics of punishment for
voting against church doctrine on abortion and other issues.”

On the May 30 CBS Evening News,
substitute anchor John Roberts announced “A new CBS News poll tonight
finds that Democrat John Kerry enjoys overwhelming support among
Catholic voters, which makes it particularly ironic that Kerry has
recently run afoul of church doctrine because of his support for
abortion rights. And Kerry is not the only one. Sharyn Alfonsi tonight
on parish politics and punishment.”

Alfonsi touted more CBS poll results: “And 78
percent of Catholics polled by CBS agree. They said they don’t think
it’s appropriate for bishops to refuse communion to elected officials
who differ with official positions of the church, people like
presidential candidate John Kerry.” Alfonsi brought on Rev. Thomas
Reese, editor of the liberal Catholic magazine America, to state there
could be a pro-Kerry backlash among Catholic voters. CBS even concluded
by leaving the distinct impression that the bishops were graver sinners
than abortion-enabling John Kerry.

When NBC Nightly News picked the story up
on June 17, the tone was still putting church officials on the
defensive, as Tom Brokaw promoted the report: “God and politics:
where’s the line that separates church and state in this election year?”

Reporter Roger O’Neil began with liberal
Catholics: “With their Bibles, signs, and voices, some of the faithful
are hoping to persuade Catholic bishops, their leaders, to reject the
latest explosive issue facing the Church: playing politics with God.”

The burden of scandal rested on church leaders,
with O’Neil using bomb terminology: “The Archbishop of St. Louis,
Raymond Burke, lit the fuse in January, saying he’d refuse communion to
Sen. John Kerry, a Catholic, because he’s pro-choice, defying church
law. Then last month, Michael Sheridan, Archbishop [sic] of Colorado
Springs, shortened the burning fuse, writing ‘even rank-and-file
Catholics who vote for sinners should stay away from the communion
rail.’”

This was the worst case of utter network
misquotation. NBC was not quoting from Bishop Sheridan, who didn’t use
terms like “rank-and-file Catholics” or “vote for sinners” (as if
President Bush was without sin!) in either his pastoral letter or the
June 2 newspaper column. The Denver Post routinely used the phrase “rank-and-file Catholics,” but not the bishop.

O’Neil quoted Catholic author George Weigel with a
rebuke of Kerry, but the reporter concluded: “But for Catholics who sit
in the pews, like Denver’s Amy Sheber-Howard, communion shouldn’t be a
divisive weapon...which if denied, could divide rather than unite.”
Here again, O’Neil misled the audience: Sheber-Howard does not just
“sit in the pews.” She’s a vice president of the left-wing Catholic
splinter lobbying group Call To Action, which lobbies for an end to
priestly celibacy, the ordination of women, and ultimately, an
overthrow of the teaching authority of the Pope, giving way to a church
run by majority vote. To portray this lobbyist against “authoritarian
and hypocritical” Catholic tradition as opposed to “division” is to
provide a clear example of misleading liberal bias.

For all of their First Amendment alarm, none of
the networks contemplated their own secular interpretation as
threatening church-state separation in reverse: that candidates for
federal office or their supporters would tell the Church what their
teachings should be about reception of the sacraments. After all, if
John Kerry didn’t want to accept Catholic teaching, he is free to join
a Protestant church instead. No one took offense at the idea that
Catholicism would be defined not by bishops or pontiffs or the
Scriptures, but by focus groups assembled by political organizations
like the Democratic National Committee or CBS News.

What Stories Did Reporters Want to Skip?

Since the number of TV network religion stories has declined, the
question emerges: What did the networks fail to cover? What stories
could have been pursued by a creative TV producer interested in
religion news? One easy way to find out is to look at the top 2004
stories as selected by the Religion Newswriters Association. Stories
about President Bush’s faith and The Passion of the Christ — which the
networks addressed — tied as the number one story of the year. But some
other stories the RNA listed were largely ignored by the networks,
including:

Gays and the clergy: In a year when
the first openly gay bishop was installed in the Episcopal Church and
gay marriages were permitted in Massachusetts, one might expect
significant coverage of gay marriage controversies in American
churches, particularly the Methodist Church, which saw two defrocking
trials within a year’s time with different results. Surprisingly, given
last year’s 64 stories largely celebrating Bishop Robinson, this wasn’t
the case with network treatment of the trials of two openly lesbian
ministers in the United Methodist Church.

In mid-March 2004, a church jury tried and
acquitted lesbian Rev. Karen Dammann of Seattle of violating the
teachings of the Bible on homosexuality and her church’s disciplinary
guidelines on sexual ethics for ordained clergy. In December, across
the country in Philadelphia, a similar proceeding tried and convicted
lesbian Methodist pastor Beth Stroud and removed her ministerial
credentials later in the year.

The broadcast networks aired stories on Dammann
but not on Stroud, and neither trial generated interview pieces with
conservative Methodists. ABC in a four-day period (March 18-21) aired
two stories and one anchor mention on the trial and acquittal of
Dammann, but ignored Stroud. CBS aired no stories on Dammann, but did
air one anchor brief on The Early Show on December 3, 2004,
the day after Stroud was convicted. NBC ran one story on March 21, 2004
on Dammann’s acquittal. The piece was slanted toward Dammann’s
position, featuring both laity and a Harvard feminist theologian
rejoicing in the decision, against one unnamed lay person who is
leaving the Methodist church in protest. NBC didn’t run any stories on
Stroud’s conviction.

The Anglicans’ Lambeth Commission pleased neither
conservatives nor liberals and offered no resolution to the rift in the
Anglican Communion over the installation of openly gay Bishop Gene
Robinson. Other than a March 60 Minutes profile of Robinson, TV coverage of the ongoing Anglican dispute almost vanished from the networks.

Rick Warren and Joel Osteen: Southern California pastor Rick Warren’s best-seller The Purpose-Driven Life
has been all over the news since former hostage Ashley Smith talked
about reading it to murder suspect Brian Nichols. But well before the
fatal Atlanta courthouse shootings, Warren’s book has been a bestseller
for two solid years, selling more than 20 million copies by last
October. By February 28, 2005, the last date studied for religious
stories in our report, the hardcover edition had been on the USA Today
best-seller list for more than 110 weeks. This year, many churches
across America, both mainline and evangelical, have adopted the book
during Lent to help guide the devotional lives of their parishioners.
Yet aside from NBC, none of the networks took notice.

NBC’s coverage consisted of two pieces, one a Dateline piece by correspondent Josh Mankiewicz on Sunday, October 3, 2004, the other an Ann Curry interview on the Today
show for October 18. The Mankiewicz piece focused more on Warren’s
pastoral ministry and casual style, whiles Curry touched mainly on the
themes of the book and its success beyond strictly Christian audiences.
Unlike Curry, Mankiewicz also prodded unsuccessfully for a taste of
Reverend Warren’s politics.

Houston pastor and bestselling author Joel Osteen
wrangled just one taped interview in February 2005 with Jamie Gangel on
Today, a few soundbites from a December 2004 World News Tonight report on ABC, and zero stories or interviews on CBS. Osteen’s book, Your Best Life Now, which topped the charts at number two, has been on the USA Today
list since last October 21. Osteen might consider himself blessed for
getting media attention so soon after publication: a Nexis search shows
no interviews or reports on Warren’s Purpose-Driven Life from the time that book initially hit bookstores in October 2002 until the Dateline piece two years later.

Gangel reported and questioned Osteen about
critics of his preaching style and theology, including Westminster
Seminary’s Michael Horton, who derided Osteen’s preaching as a “fortune
cookie” Gospel. The World News Tonight piece by reporter Erin
Hayes ignored theological disputes, instead portraying Osteen, T.D.
Jakes, Joyce Meyer, and Catholic priest Francis Mary of Eternal Word
Television Network as leading voices in a new generation of television
evangelists which cater to the heart of President Bush’s electoral
base, social conservatives. Once again, a religious story was covered
purely from a political template.

Sunni vs. Shi’a Theology: In all of
their coverage of Iraq’s religious factions and their political aims,
none of the broadcast networks ever gave a basic explanation of the key
religious differences between these sects of the Islamic faith. For all
their warning of impending civil war, they haven’t explained why their
differences on matters of faith have proven a consistent source of
conflict.

The differences are these: Upon the death of
Muhammad, two major factions emerged from disagreement on the question
of prophetic succession. Those siding with Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law,
claimed he was the rightful heir to Muhammad’s prophetic office, and
possessed with it the ability to teach the Islamic faith and govern the
Islamic ummah (worldwide communion of Muslims) infallibly. He
was chosen as the first Imam. Opposing Ali’s claim were the Sunnis, who
thought it wiser to elect a successor (or caliph) from among elders to
serve in the place of Muhammad. Unlike Shi’a imams, the Sunni caliphs
needed not be descended from Ali, nor were they considered doctrinally
infallible.

Today, many Shi’a have an eschatological belief
that the twelfth Imam, the mahdi, shall reemerge from his “occultation”
to lead Muslims in the future. It is somewhat similar to the Christian
belief in the second coming of Christ. This belief in an imminent
return of the mahdi has inspired, in fact, the Mahdi Militia of radical
Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr,
whose supporters suggest he is in effect the Islamic Messiah, and the
Americans are trying to kill him. No such explanation was aired on the
broadcast networks, a disservice to American viewers regardless of
their personal religious faith.

Recommendations

How could the balance and fairness and context of TV religion
coverage improve? There are some simple recommendations to increase the
quality of religion reporting on TV news.

1. Hire a religion reporter. Networks
continue to assign general-assignment reporters to the religion beat
instead of hiring a religion specialist. None of the networks have a
religion specialist. The reporters cited in this study – from ABC’s
Brian Rooney and Dan Harris to CBS’s Jim Axelrod and Sharyn Alfonsi to
NBC’s Roger O’Neil and Carl Quintanilla – have no noticeable background
in religion coverage, nor do they have degrees in religious studies.

2. Hire reporters who are religious. Both
opinion surveys of journalists and the tone of religion news suggest
that the majority of reporters remain in the pattern of hostility
toward traditional religious values. More religious reporters would
bring greater knowledge and fairness to religious debates. Editors
prefer to assign minority reporters to cover minority groups. Why can’t
they find religious reporters to cover religion?

3. When covering religion stories, use religious questions and approaches, not just secular or political ones.
The media elite have taken the separation of church and state into
another dimension: the separation of church and culture, or ultimately
the separation of church and news. Once again this year, news stories
on the social issues that inflamed religious Americans the most, from
“gay marriage” to embryo-destroying stem cell research, didn’t often
find a place in those stories for a religious perspective. Religiously
inspired political views are no less valid in the public square than
atheistically founded political views.

4. If TV news wants to dabble in theology, the
sample of experts interviewed ought to balance conservative and
progressive experts. NBC still enjoys bringing on liberal Catholic
priest and author Andrew Greeley to speak for Catholics. As previously
explained, CBS liked finding liberal Catholic experts and journalists
to warn the bishops away from criticizing John Kerry. ABC found its
expert in God with its own liberal medical reporter (and minister) Dr.
Timothy Johnson, giving him two segments to plug his book, Finding God in the Questions.

Airing stories on complicated religious subjects
is an ambitious undertaking. But viewers with traditional, more
orthodox religious views often don’t see their worldview discussed so
much as dismissed.

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